In the art of airtight sealing there are a variety of sealing mechanisms that are available for resealing a vessel opening, typically a bottle neck, that previously been opened. A very common example in the prior-art of record is re-sealing a Champaign bottle or other bottle type adapted to contain pressurized and non-pressurized liquids.
The inventor is aware of a stopper device referenced herein by U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,350, which comprises a cap or hood, an elongated rubber sleeve, and a connecting rod or piston rigidly affixed to the cap or hood, the rod supporting the rubber sleeve. This stopper is pressed into a bottle to stretch the sleeve via the connecting rod to fill the annular gap between the rod and inner wall of a bottle opening to be stopped.
A drawback with this kind of device is that it is not adjustable in terms of seal strength and must be manufactured for a specific size bottle opening. Many conventional stoppers are of the just-described type and have many limitations related to use-ability and convenience in manufacturing.
The inventor is aware of another type of stopper device referenced herein as an example of this type by U.S. Pat. No. 4,175,668, which comprises a cap having articulated jaws or straps designed to engage the bottle neck below a lipped portion thereof using the lip feature of the bottle neck to leverage closure and sealing with a cork stopper portion of the apparatus. This type of device utilizes leverage via manually clamping and unclamping of the jaws to apply leverage to depress a cork into the bottle opening. A limitation of this device is that it requires a bottle opening to have a lip to which the apparatus must be dimensionally adapted. Moreover, such mechanically dependent parts often bend break or otherwise lose usefulness with improper or even repeated use. Another U.S. patent that describes a variation of a lip-dependant stopper is referenced herein as U.S. Pat. No. 4,534,482. The same types of limitations apply.
The inventor is also aware of a stopper coupled with an air injection mechanism referenced herein as U.S. Pat. No. 4,842,151, which comprises a closure assembly, a female disconnect joint and an air pumping unit. In a variation of lever-actuated stoppers, a cam lever is leveraged to force compression to an inserted seal plug to expand the plug outwardly thereby sealing the bottle. A one-way air passage extending through the assembly into the interior portion of the bottle is used to introduce air into the bottle after sealing to maintain internal pressure, hence maintaining carbonation therein. The device has the same limitations as the lever actuated sealing device described further above with respect to fragile and obstructive moving parts and must be forcibly held down against the bottle before sealing can be affected.
Prior-art forming of bottles in general and specifically Champaign and wine bottles include lips, tapers, and other forms to which prior-art stopper devices must be adapted. Persuasively, the prior-art stoppers mentioned above are limited in application to specific implementations of consumer bottles of pre-known shapes, sizes and dimensions.
What is clearly needed in the art is an adjustable and axially activated stopper assembly that can be implemented without lever and with minimum force or work and that does not depend on any feature of a bottle opening to engage successfully.